The New Millenarianism II

Now that Torre has won his 1000th game, the wankers at ESPN are speculating in their party-line way as to whether he is among the greatest managers of all time. Let me pose the question another way: has any manager, in the history of baseball, had the the kind of talent for 5 consecutive years that Torre has enjoyed and not won at least 1 world championship? I'll ask it another way, last year Torre had 5 likely Hall of Famers (Jeter, Rivera, Johnson, Rodriguez, and Sheffield), along with Giambi who has an outside shot. The year before he had 4 likely Hall of Famers and one guy with an outside shot. Can someone please name for me the last team--if there ever was one--that had 4 and 5 Hall of Famers in consecutive years and didn't even win the pennant? No, seriously, I'm really asking. Please let me know if you can think of any and if there is more than one or two. Because otherwise, I think we have to say that if Torre is one of the greatest mangers of all time, on the strength of 1996-2000, he is also one of the worst, on the weakness of everything since.

By the by, the word pundit, which is what Gammons, Kruk, Phillips and Ravech fancy themselves, comes from the Hindi and Sanscrit word for a learned man, typically used to designate a Brahmanic scholar. Hmm, and you thought late capitalist society wasn't a sinkhole of degeneration. I give you ESPN, proof of Nordau's prescience.